MILWAUKEE — Democrats are pausing their counter-messaging at the Republican National Convention — including a Monday press conference with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker — as authorities investigate the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee are also pulling negative advertising in Milwaukee, including on billboards. The committee had launched a six-figure paid media campaign, which included 16 billboards across the Milwaukee area, 57 bus wraps and a mobile billboard to circle the RNC.
The campaign and the Democratic National Committee planned to hold daily press conferences headlined by key campaign surrogates to highlight “the grave danger that Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans pose to our democracy, our rights and our livelihoods.”
But with the gruesome images and videos of Trump bleeding on a rally stage still fresh on the minds of millions of Americans, Democrats are opting to let Biden take the lead on the response, including another primetime address on Sunday, and an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt on Monday.
Democrats had planned to focus their RNC messaging on abortion, tax breaks for billionaires and highlighting that “democracy is under assault,” including with a real-time, rapid-response operation.
The Biden campaign called it a “pause,” but Democrats are expected to pick up counter-messaging later in the week, a source with close knowledge of the plans said. The Biden campaign has pulled television campaign ads and all paid media spending, which includes billboards and bus wraps.
Vice President Kamala Harris also postponed a planned campaign trip to Florida on Tuesday, where she had been scheduled to meet with Republican women voters.
“We cannot allow this to be happening,” Biden said about two hours after the attack. “The idea that there’s violence in America like this is just unheard of.” On Sunday afternoon, the president asked the country to “unite as one nation” and ordered an independent security review.
Later, in an evening address from the Oval Office, Biden stressed that political violence should never be accepted, adding that “in America we resolve our differences at the ballot box.”
Pritzker was scheduled to appear for a Monday morning press conference in Milwaukee with former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Biden deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks, who previously served as Pritzker’s former political director.
DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar had also planned to host press conferences in Milwaukee.
Pritzker spoke to the Ohio Democratic Party hours before the shooting on Saturday. The Democratic governor, who has been on shortlists and has been polled as a potential top-of-the-ticket replacement, told the crowd “there has never been a more stressful time to be a Democrat than right now.”
But he told fellow Democrats if the party stops worrying about “whether they might call us ‘woke’ and instead worry about whether we’re actually waking people up, if we stopped being so damn afraid of a little chaos and just embraced it as the path from here to there, we will win.”
He also highlighted aspects of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” which he called a “blueprint for making the President a dictator, stripping rights from women, exploiting workers, criminalizing the LGBTQ community and rolling back every hard-won civil rights victory over the last 100 years.”
Pritzker on Saturday night quickly tweeted after the attack that he was “praying for former President Trump’s recovery.”
“Violence is never the answer in our democracy,” Pritzker said.
Pritzker’s abortion rights group “Think Big America” has also paid for billboards in Milwaukee to greet Republicans as they arrive in Milwaukee. One reads, “Extremists are in town this week to nominate a president who wants a national abortion ban. Stop them. Vote.” Another says, “The end of Roe v. Wade, brought to you by MAGA extremists.”
Those billboards remained up on Sunday, a day before the convention.
